Of Campaigns, Mistakes, and Love
by Canne
Summary: For both Josh and Donna, this campaign is about more than an election.
1. Memories

Title: Of Campaigns, Mistakes, and Love

Author: Claire

Rating: K

Summary: For Donna, this campaign is about more than an election.

Disclaimer: While I have always wanted to be a millionaire, I am not one yet. Therefore, you may deduce that I do not own The West Wing or anything related to it. Warner Brothers has that privilege.

Author's Note: This fits somewhere in the Seventh Season, before "The Cold". I haven't quite decided where yet.

* * *

She wants to laugh with him again, but it's been a long time since they were able to laugh together. She thinks maybe this was all her fault. Her fault for leaving him, going to Gaza. For ever talking to CJ that night. For sleeping with Colin. For not letting him know in Germany that his presence was more precious than any of Colin's flowers or kisses. For leaving him before he had the chance to leave her. 

But, she reminds herself, she was the one who came back. Such is their history: she runs away, only to run back just as quickly.

Every so often, on the campaign bus or dozing on the plane, she takes mental stock of her decisions over the last year. Was leaving Josh a year ago worth the distance that has grown between them? Was losing his trust worth proving herself as a political operative? Was, dare she say it, breaking his heart worth proving that she could be valuable to others? She wants to add all the variables and prove to herself that she made the right decision, but her arithmetic must be off because she only comes out feeling guilty.

She is back with him again, working at his side instead of in his wake, but nothing is right between them. The banter is gone, completely. She hates that, and in her more maudlin moments she cries over its loss.

The tension is still there, but it is not exciting any more. It is ugly and painful and bitter, another chasm separating them from one another. She watches him fall apart, every single day, and yet she cannot do anything. She does not know if she even remembers how to put him back together any more. That used to be something she knew how to do in her sleep; she knew which ragged edges matched which in the puzzle that was Josh's psyche. But now, either she's forgotten what it took her eight years to learn or he has shattered into more pieces, transforming those that she remembers so well.

She feels old now, far older than she has a right to. She watches the young campaign staff whirl around her, excited by anything and everything they encounter, and she can't help but envy them. But, at the same time, she pities them. This campaign, this isn't what an election should be like. Elections should be like the first Bartlett campaign, where the entire staff ran off of idealism and sheer audacity. They were young and flying in the face of a party, of a world, that told them they had no chance. But they knew what they had. They had the famed 'real thing' and they had enough nerve to tell the rest of the DNC, the rest of the nation that Bartlett was it. There had been stress, but there had also been laughter and more energy than Leo had known what to do with. And when they had won, they had known that they could change the world.

The Santos campaign lacks the dream quality that she lusts after. He's too solid, too normal. Before, Bartlett had been too short, too smart, and too forward for his own good. But they had adored him. And, more importantly, they had made him President, despite all those things.

She's proud of Matt Santos, and sure she is that he'll make a wonderful president, but he's not someone she'll ever idolize. Matt Santos is a good man. Josiah Bartlett is a great man. But, to her, Joshua Lyman is better than either of them. And that, of course, is why she's here. Despite the long hours, despite the pathetic pay (worse even than her White House salary), despite the candidate she only moderately prefers to the alternative, despite everything else, she's here because of him. Because what she discovered about herself during her traitorous stint with the Russell campaign is that she's a better person when she's with him.

That scares her, especially now when it seems like they'll never readjust to one another. The thought of continuing on like this, working with Josh as an associate, no longer his right hand, destroys her.

Things have to change; she just doesn't know how to change them anymore.

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I'm a Uni student. I live only for the weekend and your reviews. 


	2. Regret

**Chapter 2: Regret **

Disclaimer: If I owned this show, it wouldn't have taken seven seasons for Josh and Donna to kiss.

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It is hard for him to remember that there is nothing hindering them anymore, aside from himself. For so long he has had to worry about policies and public perceptions, now all he has to worry over is whether she still wants him. 

When she first came to him, he was smitten. It was embarrassing at the time, how utterly enraptured he was by this young, beautiful college dropout. Sam and C.J. had teased him mercilessly for weeks, until they realized that Donna was someone special. After that, he thought that they had felt badly for him.

His mother had grown sick of her son's constant ramblings about Donna only one month after she had joined the campaign. She had demanded that he bring Donna to the house when they stopped in Connecticut. He doesn't have many good memories of the last few months of his father's life, but the night he took Donna to the house for dinner is certainly one of them. His father had loved her, thought that she was beautiful and smart and willful enough to handle his son. Before they had left that evening, his father had pulled him aside and reminded him that you only get so many chances to do things right 'before the powers that be get sick of dealing with your gross incompetence.' He is embarrassed now to think that, if there is an afterlife, his father knows exactly how many chances Josh has let pass him by.

She left him; he doesn't think he's recovered from the shock of that yet. He'd spent an entire flight to Germany, followed by several days at her bedside, thinking that he had finally lost her and, with her, his chance at happiness. But then she came back, back to him, and he was finally smiling and laughing again. And then, when he least expected it, she quit. She quit him.

But now, a year later, she's back with him. She looks like the same Donna he worked with for eight years, she smiles like her, sounds like her, laughs like her, but she doesn't relate to him like she used to. All the things that made their relationship special: the banter, the almost-psychic link between them, that incredible tension, all of that is gone now. And he still loves her but he's too tired to build everything back up again. So he keeps asking himself, over and over again, can they still be Josh and Donna, without everything that made them so?

He's terrified that the answer is no, that this is where it ends, that from now on Donna will be just another familiar face on the beltway. Another Lou, another Angela Blake, another Amy. He shudders at the thought.

He wants the girl with endless enthusiasm, with such spirit and passion that it transferred to him, kept him going through the darkest hours of the Bartlett administration. He can still see that in her, in the new-and-improved Donna, but it's dulled by her new 'business' persona. He's proud of her, for proving herself, and he loathes her at the same time for changing. But, the more time he spends with her, the more he realizes that he can love this new Donna too. He just doesn't know if he wants to.

Does he even have the time to learn her again? This campaign is unlike any he's ever worked on before, perhaps because, for the first time, he's in charge. He's terrified that someone will realize that he knows nothing, that he's doing everything wrong and that everyone is going to hate him by Election Day. He's afraid of losing Leo's approval, or having Donna be disappointed with him.

He can't even feel anymore. He has bruises all over his body, but he can't remember bumping into anything. He has almost completely stopped sleeping. Whenever he tries to rest, he is plagued by nightmares. Visions of shooters gunning down the campaign staff as they leave headquarters. Of the black secret service SUVs exploding. So, he doesn't sleep, instead he obsesses over the election. He's useless now, even he knows it. He doesn't know why they haven't locked him in a broom closet yet; he certainly would have if it had been someone else had been behaving this way. But no one does or says anything, so he continues running himself into the ground. Every waking moment he feels ready to fall apart.

Thoughts of Donna hound him, but he lacks both the energy and the courage to attempt to change anything between them. After, he tells himself, after the election he'll do something, but he's not sure if he believes himself even as he says it.

Things have to change; he just doesn't know how to change them anymore.


	3. Fantasy

**Chapter 3: Fantasy**

A/N: I was intending to make this the fifth chapter, with chapters three and four covering the events of "The Cold". However, I am too lazy to write those other chapters and I really, really wanted to post this one. I loved Sunday's episode, although it frustrated me to no end.

* * *

The one event she'd dreamed about for eight years had finally occurred and it had born no resemblance to any of her dreams.

Logically, she knows she is acting like a teenage girl, obsessing as she is, but she doesn't really care. She's lusted after Josh, loved Josh, for so long that's she's forgotten when it first started and she certainly can't count the number of rather explicit scenarios she's imagined enacting with him.

On his desk. On Air Force One (that one made her blush for days). On a beach in Hawaii. But never did she think it would happen somewhere as normal as a hotel room. And never, never did it even occur to her that it could happen on Election Day, a day which to Josh was as sacred as Christmas or Easter were to most people.

And she certainly hadn't thought that it would be so…impersonal.

This is the first relationship where she has had to take the lead and she's fairly certain that's she's doing a bad job of it. The one relationship she can't afford to make more mistakes at, and all she seems to do is create awkward situation after awkward situation.

The sex itself had been fine, thank goodness. She loves him and he loves her, this they have never discussed or disputed. They both know. However, this makes them more hesitant with one another, unsure of what comes next in their relationship. Lying in bed afterwards, each clinging to opposite sides of the bed, the emotional distance between them was greater than ever, after an act that should have sealed it.

In her dreams, they had always held each other afterwards, falling asleep curled together. In her imagination, they had talked and laughed while making love, caressing each other with words as well as with their bodies. Today, they had done none of that and a piece of her, the little piece hidden in a corner that still believed in princes and fairytale endings and true love, became slightly smaller.

His capacity to love, to give of himself, has always attracted her. When he is dedicated to something, or to someone, his gives it his full attention and all his passion. All she wanted was that, but instead she got a worried, hesitant Josh whose mind was whirling with electoral math even as they made love.

But, she reminds herself, it is her fault. She's the one who invited him to her room. Her selfish need for him, the want to feel connected to him in some way, even if only physically, was overwhelming. As they made their way from the bar to her bedroom, she knew what she should expect from him that evening, yet she couldn't help but secretly hope that her touch, her body would wake him from his election-induced coma and that maybe then he would come back to her; body, mind and spirit intact. Such dreams only serve to prove that, despite eight years in politics, she is still as naive as she was the first day she started working with Josh.

When they come together again, less than twelve hours after their first encounter, they are better prepared. It is more natural, more affectionate, more meaningful. They watch each other in the early afternoon light and smile. It's not quite laughter and banter, but it is close, and, for now, it is enough.

Afterwards, they both lie on their backs, their bodies almost touching. How far they have come in one day. This time, instead of annoying her, Josh's cautiousness makes her smile. His concern over being unromantic secretly thrills her. At the same time she is amused that now is the time that he chooses to worry over romance. It is an admission that this is going to continue; that there is a future for them, for whatever this is that has been growing between them for almost a decade. It is also a glimmer of the Josh she knows, of the emotions behind the man, emotions that have been hiding from her for too long.

Finally, she thinks, she is getting him back.

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Thanks to the loyal few who are reviewing this, you guys make my day!


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